The UK Guardian echoed the sentiment: “The verdict could not have been clearer: the World Bank's private lending arm failed to comply with its own ethical standards when it lent millions of dollars to a Honduran palm oil company accused of links to assassinations and forced evictions.”

The study concluded that the International Finance Corporation, which lends to companies in developing countries, failed to follow its own requirements when it first approved the 2009 loan to Corporación Dinant, and that its supervision afterward was inadequate.

Regarding the violence in the region, the CAO investigation states: “According to civil society sources there were at least 102 killings of people affiliated with the peasant movement in the Bajo Aguán between January 2010 and May 2013, with specific allegations being made linking 40 of these to Dinant properties, Dinant security guards or its third party security contractor. Allegations in relation to the killing of at least 9 Dinant security personnel by affiliates of the peasant movement have also been made.”

While we are pleased that the findings of the independent review match our own understanding of the situation in Honduras, we have yet to see the World Bank withdraw funding from the project. In its response, the IFC has rejected some of the CAO findings -- though it fails to specify which ones or provide evidence to support its rebuff.

Juan Almendarez, Director of Friends of the Earth Honduras (Movimiento Madre Tierra) said, "We condemn the policies of the World Bank that have failed to avoid the human rights violations of poor farmers´ families and cooperatives in the Aguán Valley, and we consider the World Bank´s response to the result of the CAO audit to be unjust and inhuman."

The audit, one of the most critical issued by the Bank's internal watchdog, was unequivocal. The IFC failed to spot the serious social, political and human rights context in which Dinant operates, or if it did, failed to act effectively on the information; and failed to disclose vital project information, consult with local communities, or to identify the project as a high-risk investment.

The CAO also said staff was incentivized "to overlook, fail to articulate, or even conceal potential environmental, social and conflict risk." They warned that such incentives could lead to, as indicated by the loan to Dinant, the IFC taking "uninformed risks with serious consequences for people, the environment and/or the Bank Group's reputation."

The findings are shocking, but merely confirm what Friends of the Earth and other civil society groups have been pointing out for years: Miguel Facusse, the largest land-owner in Honduras, has been using money provided by the World Bank to grab land and wage a private war on peasants. But the findings also point to a larger concern -- the Honduras case is but one among infinite examples of global finance and multilateral “development” banks using the pretext of ‘poverty reduction’ and ‘development’ to marginalize, dispossess, and even murder those who fail to abide by the dictates of their economic program.

Of course, there remains a long way to go for human rights in Honduras. Since the November 2013 Honduran elections -- widely recognized to have been marred by systematic fraud -- the country continues to be wracked by state-sponsored violence. Under such conditions, where impunity is the rule rather than the exception, it is no surprise that the country’s powerful elites literally get away with murder.

What is a surprise is that, with the release of the CAO-Ombudsman’s report, the peasants of the lower Aguan Valley just might begin to see some justice.

UPDATE, January 17: A group of global and Honduran civil society groups are nowcalling on World Bank President Jim Yong Kim to take immediate actionto withhold funding to Dinant, to require Dinant to halt all violence directed at local farmers, to find a peaceful and sustainable resolution to conflict over land, and to ensure that appropriate incentives are in place to secure IFC staff’s adherence to its policies and procedures. To read the statement, click here.